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Across the country, millions of voters turned in early ballots for the US presidential primary elections, often voting for candidates no longer in the race on election day.

In Colorado and Texas, early voters for candidates other than Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders might have made a statement, but they didnt have the chance to influence the primary election. Some of the estimated 20% of Californians who voted early asked for a do-over. In Minnesota, 40,000 people had reportedly cast their ballots a week before Super Tuesday and days before Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out.

Just yesterday, more than a million Washington voters finally had the chance to weigh in. Unlike other states, which saw long lines and voting machine errors, the state votes by mail and has a highly engaged electorate. As a result, a significant proportion of ballots were returned early, essentially throwing away their vote.

Early voting is generally viewed as a good thing by civil rights advocates it helps avoid errors on election day, and curbs long lines at the precinct. But voting for soon-to-be unviable candidates is not only a frustrating reality for proactive voters, but intrinsically harmful to the democratic process.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution: ranked-choice voting (RCV). And its one that has the potential to address a host of other problems that plague our electoral system, including negative campaigning and lack of minority representation.

Four states Alaska, Kansas, Wyoming and Hawaii are already using ranked-choice voting in the current Democratic presidential primaries, and one state, Maine, uses it for state elections and for US Congress and president. New York City also recently adopted ranked-choice voting beginning in 2021. But most of the country has yet to catch on.

Under ranked-choice voting, voters rank their favorite candidates in order of preference, and if their first choice is no longer viable, their vote would count towards their next choice. The process would continue until all votes are supporting viable candidates.

If ranked-choice voting had been in place in Washington, voters who turned in their ballot early for Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Mike Bloomberg or Elizabeth Warren could rest assured that their vote would still count towards their next preference rather than being wasted on a candidate who is no longer in the running. And candidates would probably face less pressure to drop out of the race early.

But reforming our primary elections is only one benefit.

Under the current plurality voting system, candidates benefit from attacking their opponents and highlighting their ideological differences in an effort to appeal to their base. However, in a ranked-choice election, candidates are also campaigning to be voters second and third choices.

We saw this happen in the 2018 San Francisco mayoral race: two candidates, Mark Leno and Jane Kim, actually campaigned together to fight for shared values as they reached out to voters in a ranked-choice election. In a political field that is often fraught with negativity, this kind of positive campaigning is a welcome change.

This same system, meanwhile, can help historically marginalized communities achieve representation in their own cities.

Here in Washington, for example, Yakima county is in the middle of a legal challenge under the Washington Voting Rights Act. The population of the county is approximately 49% Latino, but the county has only ever elected one Latino candidate to the county commission partly because it has an at-large general election system that dilutes minority voting rights.

We are trying to ensure that we have a more equitable election system here in Yakima county, Dulce Gutirrez, a plaintiff in the case, and one of the few Latinx city council members elected told us. We believe that there are remedies that can improve the likelihood of representation.

In Yakima, a switch to ranked-choice voting with multi-member districts would help achieve 'proportional representation'

Historically, the remedy has been to move to majority-minority districts that concentrate minority voters in a particular geographic district in order to garner representation. However, such a system is vulnerable to gerrymandering and vote splitting and, perversely, only protects communities of color that live in highly segregated neighborhoods.

In Yakima, a switch to ranked-choice voting with multi-member districts would help achieve proportional representation and guarantee that roughly every one-third of the residents is able to pick one of the three commissioners. Latino candidates regularly get more than a third of the countywide vote, but historically are unable to win countywide races.

Washington state has been a leader in adopting commonsense reforms, like mandating marriage equality or legalizing marijuana, but it is well behind the curve in electoral reforms like ranked-choice voting.

We have plenty of real-life examples of ranked-choice voting working for communities. Its already used in several countries, including Australia, Scotland and New Zealand. Its also gathering momentum in the United States, where it is used in over 20 jurisdictions.

After all, our democracy is at stake.

Mohit Nair is partnerships director of FairVote Washington.

Colin Cole is legislative director and a co-founder of FairVote Washington. He is also policy director at MoreEquitableDemocracy.

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Millions of Democratic votes were lost in the primaries. Is this the fix? - The Guardian

Just when I am starting to think that the New York Review of Books is not irredeemably idiotic on political issues, they publish an article that is so conspicuously incoherent and outrageously out of touch with the political climate in the U.S. that it is destined to be anthologized in perpetuity in collections with Clueless in the title. The article, The Party Cannot Hold, by Michael Tomasky is about the current state of the Democratic party.

The current divide in the Democratic party, writes Tomasky, is about capitalismwhether it can be reformed and remade to create the kind of broad prosperity the country once knew, but without the sexism and racism of the postwar period, as liberals hope; or whether corporate power is now so great that we are simply beyond that, as the younger socialists would argue, and more radical surgery is called for.

Hmm, hes right, of course, that there is a faction of the Democratic party that wants to reform capitalism, to remake it to create the kind of broad prosperity the country once knew. The thing is, that faction is the younger one. The older, liberal, Democrats have concentrated almost all their efforts on getting rid of sexism and racism, laudable goals to be sure, but oddly disconnected in the liberal imagination from economic issues.

Tomasky is also correct, of course, that a growing number of people in this country think Capitalism in any form is simply morally bankrupt and that we need a new socioeconomic system entirely. Few of these people, however, are registered Democrats. Most of them arent even Social Democrats since the overthrow of capitalism hasnt been a part of the Social Democratic platform since the middle of the last century, at least according to Encyclopedia Britannica. Indeed, Wikipedia defines Social democracy as a political, social and economic philosophy that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented economy (emphasis added). That Social Democrats are planning the overthrow of capitalism would be disturbing news to the many capitalists countries in Europe where they are an important political force.

Tomasky points out that Sanders, even if he were elected, would be unable to implement many of the programs that are part of his platform, that the best hed get in terms of healthcare, for example, would be a Bidenesque public option, meaning, I presume, and option such as Biden is advocating for now, because as Americans know too well, politicians almost never deliver on campaign promises. The electorate is nearly always forced to accept some watered-down version of what theyve been promised, if indeed, they get any version of it at all. Thats clearly part of the reason so many people support Sanders.

Few of Sanders supporters are so politically nave that they think once he was in office wed have universal healthcare. They assume theyd get something less than that. They also assume, however, and history suggests, correctly, that if Biden were elected, theyd get something less than he is promising, which means theyd get nothing at all! Its either disingenuous or idiotic of Tomasky to suggest that theres essentially no difference between Sanders and Bidens healthcare plans, since even a child will tell you that something is clearly better than nothing.

Tomasky assumes that only if someone other than Sanders gets the nomination would the left try to increase its leverage by, for example, running left-wing candidates against a large number of mainstream Democratic House incumbents. I kid you not, he actually said that. See, thats what happens when you dont pay sufficient attention to what is going on around you. Or perhaps Tomasky is simply being disingenuous again and hoping that the average reader of the New York Review of Books hasnt been following the Sanders campaign and the calls of both Sanders and his supporters for bringing about sweeping political change by running left-wing candidates against a large number of mainstream Democratic House incumbents.

If Sanders wins the nomination, writes Tomasky, it becomes absolutely incumbent upon Democratic establishment figures to get behind him, because a second Trump term is unthinkable. But the reality is, he continues, that a number of them wont.

Hmm. Why is it that a number of Democratic establishment figures would rather have a second term of Trump than even one term of Sanders? Thats not my charge, I feel compelled to remind readers here. Its Tomasky who came right out and admitted that! Yes, the Democratic establishment, despite it protestations to the contrary, would rather have a second term of Trump than even one term of Sanders according to Michael Tomasky, editor-in-chief of Democracy, a special correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, and a contributing editor for The American Prospect, as well as a contributor to the New York Review of Books.

Why is that? Well, because as Tomasky observes himself earlier in the article, Democrats have, since the 1990s, gotten themselves far too indebted to certain donor groups, notably Wall Street and the tech industry. Yes, this is the same Tomasky who began the article in question by characterizing these very same Democrats, now in the pocket of Wall Street and the tech industry, as wanting to reform capitalism, to remake it to create the kind of broad prosperity the country once knew.

Biden is apparently not the only prominent Democrat who appears to be suffering from some kind of dementia.

Thats not the only dotty thing Tomasky says in the article. In a parliamentary system, he says, Biden would be in the main center-left party. Okay, yeah, maybe, if we suddenly had a parliamentary system in the U.S. In any other country that presently has a parliamentary system Biden would be in the center-right party, if not actually the far-right party.

The view that Sanders supporters are mostly young socialists is delusional. The very same issue of the New York Review of Books includes an excellent article about our current health-care crisis entitled Left Behind by Helen Epstein. Epstein explains that substantial numbers of the working poor support Sanders and that 117,000 Pennsylvanians who voted for Sanders in the [2016] primary cast their general election ballots for Trump. Hmm, it seems unlikely that those 117,000 Pennsylvanians were all young socialists.

Tomaskys world doesnt even cohere with the world as represented by other contributors to the publication in which his article appears, let alone to the real, concrete world. It exists only in his fevered imagination and the similarly fevered imaginations of other Democrats who delude themselves that they are centrists rather than right-wing neoliberals. There are bits and pieces of the truth in Tomaskys vision of the disunity in the Democratic party but he puts those bits together like a child forcing pieces of a puzzle where they dont belong.

What Tomasky fails to appreciate is just how mad, in the sense of angry, the average American voter is. Epstein writes that [i]f you include those who have left the workforce altogether, the U.S. employment rate is almost as high as it was in 1931. She cites Anne Case and Angus Deaton as observing in Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism that [t]he amount American spend unnecessarily on health care weighs more heavily on our economy than the Versailles Treaty reparations did on Germans in the 1920s.

Oh yeah, people are angry. Few people are blaming capitalism as such, but nearly everyone whos suffering economically appears to be blaming the political establishment, and blaming the Democrats just as much as the Republicans. This is clear from the people interviewed in the 2019 documentary The Corporate Coup dEtat. These are people who voted for Sanders in the 2016 primary, but who then voted for Trump in the general election. Theyre not socialists. Theyre just angry. Really angry, and theyre angry at both sides of the political establishment.

Tomasky is worried about the Democratic party, with its two fictional factions, breaking apart because he concludes our [political] system militates against a schism. No third party, he thinks, could be a significant political force.

Oh yeah? Think again, Tomasky.

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Extraordinary Democratic Delusions and the Madness of the Crowd - CounterPunch

Experts at MIT recently concluded that there is no statistical evidence of fraud in the results of the Bolivian presidential elections last October. These findings debunk an earlier report by the Organization of American States (OAS), which were used to justify a right-wing coup detat in the Andean nation.

All in all, the OAS statistical analysis and conclusions would appear deeply flawed, the researchers, John Curiel and Jack R. Williams of the Election Data and Science Lab, wrote in the Washington Post. They added that the incumbent, Evo Morales, very likely garnered more than the 10 percent margin needed to avoid a second round vote.

The announcement has caused an international uproar.

The OAS missions report alleging intentional manipulation to favor Morales re-election led to an insurrection by the Bolivian armed forces and ultra right parties, as well as violent conflict in the streets. To date, an interim government headed by a minor member of parliament, Jeanine Aez, remains in power. Scores of pro-Morales protesters were killed in the mayhem that ensued after the regional organization called into question the legitimacy of the electoral process and ignited the chain of events that led to the coup.

As it turns out, Bolivia isnt the only election where the OAS has played a role in steering results, rather than monitoring and assuring democratic practice.

An analysis of recent election observation missions and statements by Secretary General Luis Almagro reveals a disturbing pattern of bias and a willingness to manipulate events and data for political purposes. More broadly, the Secretary Generals revival of Cold War ideology and allegiance to the Trump administration has created a pattern that consistently favors right-wing governments and forces, while attacking or attempting to eliminate the left in power.

This behavior in a regional forum founded to resolve controversy poses a serious threat to democratic practice as well as the self-determination of nations.

Bolivia

The actions of the OAS Electoral Mission in Bolivia, headed by the Costa Rican Manuel Gonzlez Sanz, triggered a break with the democratic order, leading not only to the coup but the subsequent killings of pro-Morales protesters by security forces, who specifically targeted indigenous supporters of the nations first indigenous president.

Indeed, the OAS accusations of manipulation in the Bolivian presidential elections catalyzed violent protests and unleashed massive human rights violations. As if awaiting a cue, armed right-wing forces mobilized to overthrow the elected government. The president and vice president, along with other high-level elected officials of the ruling MAS party, were forced to flee when their houses were set on fire and they came under attack.

Just hours after the polls closed, the OAS mission issued a press release before the vote count was finished, followed up two days later by a preliminary report calling into question Morales lead of just over 10 percent. The report cited a hard to explain pause in the rapid count and other criticisms of the process.

Based on the report, right-wing forces that had hoped to gain power by forcing Morales into a second round of voting, protested. They were joined by some social organizations, staging demonstrations as well as burning buildings. When the armed forces stepped in threatening a coup, Morales resigned to avoid further bloodshed. A government of ultra-right-wing political figures took power, unleashing the attacks on indigenous peoples and Morales supporters.

An earlier analysis of the OAS reports by the Center for Economic and Policy Research showed that the mission provided no proof of fraud, and that the timing and accusations of the report played a critical political role in the subsequent chain of events. On February 27, the study by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab concluded:

The OASs claim that the stopping of the TREP [Transmission of Preliminary Electoral Results] during the Bolivian election produced an oddity in the voting trend is contradicted by the data. While there was a break in the reporting of votes, the substance of those later-reporting votes could be determined prior to the break. Therefore, we cannot find results that would lead us to the same conclusion as the OAS. We find it is very likely that Morales won the required 10 percentage point margin to win in the first round of the election on October 20, 2019.

By using its electoral mission to rashly question official elections results, the OAS report contributed to mob violence and the fall of the elected government. The openly racist and misogynist rightwing forces that came to power carried out at least one documented massacre of indigenous peoples.

When national and international voices protested the Bolivian coup detat, the OAS Secretary General retorted: Yes, there was a coup in Bolivia on October 20, when Evo Morales committed electoral fraud an unsubstantiated assertion that did not express a consensus view within the organization nor even reflect the language of the mission.

Following publication of the expert analysis, the OAS wrote a letter to the Washington Post, complaining that the study is not honest, fact-based, or exhaustive. However, the organization has not presented a full scientific rebuttal or specific reasons for its assertion. In view of the doubts and the dire impact, the Mexican government has demanded an explanation from the OAS. Neither the OAS leadership nor the mission have responded to the request.

There are reports that the OAS followed the political dictates of the U.S. government in precipitating the Bolivian coup. The Los Angeles Times reported:

Carlos Trujillo, the U.S. ambassador to the OAS, had steered the groups election-monitoring team to report widespread fraud and pushed the Trump administration to support the ouster of Morales. (The State Department denied Trujillo exercised undue influence on the report and said it respects the autonomy of the OAS. Trujillo, through a spokesman, declined a request for an interview.)

The OASs lack of transparency regarding its mission to Bolivia has compounded suspicions. Unlike other election observations, all of which should be included in the OAS public database, the 2019 Bolivia mission does not appear at all. The OAS press office has not responded to numerous queries regarding the omission of the data on the Bolivian mission, including the names of the members and other pertinent information.

Honduras

The November 2017 presidential elections in Honduras provide another example of the OASs political agenda. That year, right-wing incumbent president Juan Orlando Hernandez ran despite a ban on his seeking re-election, which was suspended by a highly questionable court ruling that declared the constitution itself unconstitutional.

On election night, after announcing that the opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla had established an irreversible lead, the Electoral Tribunal shut down the vote count and later returned to announce the incumbents unlikely victory amid massive disbelief. The OAS mission questioned the re-election of President Juan Orlando Hernandez, known as JOH by his initials, and announced the elections too dirty to call. Almagro called for new elections.

By contrast, the Trump administration immediately endorsed the Honduran Electoral Tribunals position and congratulated Orlando Herndandez on his supposed victory, while pressuring allies to do the same. Following the U.S. lead, Almagro eventually backed down from his insistence on new elections and accepted the incumbent government.

The Hondurans administration brutally repressed widespread popular protests following the election, leaving more than 30 opposition demonstrators dead. While the direct blame lies with the Honduran government, the OASs inability to assure or restore clean elections, and its compliance with U.S. policy causing it to reverse its original position, contributed to the breakdown of rule of law in the country.

Today the political crisis continues to claim lives and forces thousands of Hondurans to emigrate every month.

Dominican Republic

OAS actions in the Dominican Republics botched local elections on February 20 again reveal its bias.

The OAS pressured the island government to adopt an automated voting system that went bonkers on polling day. When Dominicans tried to vote, the names of certain candidates did not appear on the screens in nearly half the precincts. The OAS Electoral Observation Mission promised to study the failure, but to date has not been able to identify the technical problem, which it was its job to avoid, or explain why it didnt catch it earlier.

The Elections Board suspended the elections just hours after the polls opened and rescheduled them for March. Although local elections may seem minor, they are the forerunner to presidential elections in May and the results affect the campaigns. Dominicans are marching to demand the resignation of the Elections Board and call for fair elections, amid claims of fraud and sabotage.

Contrary to its actions in Bolivia, after the Dominican elections fiasco, the OAS mission did not immediately release a destabilizing report alleging manipulation. Instead, it supported the Elections Boards decision to reschedule elections and scrap the U.S.-based automated system, which cost the island a reported $80 million between equipment and the aborted elections.

Faced with a major breakdown in the system in the Dominican Republic, the OAS mission and its Secretary General did not point fingers, stating prudently: To date there is no evidence to indicate a willful misuse of the electronic instruments designed for automated voting.

Despite the obvious discrepancy between the two cases, however, the OASs press release used the opportunity to defend its Bolivia mission, promising to apply the same standards of technical quality and professional rigor as the process that was recently carried out in Bolivia leading some Dominicans to note on Twitter that the comparison was not reassuring.

Commentators have blamed the OAS in part for the breakdown in the Dominican system. In New York City, Dominican immigrants demonstrated in front of OAS headquarters against the elections disaster and called for to respect the vote. U.S. Congressman Adriano Epaillat demanded that the head of the Elections Board resign. But the scores of OAS observers working on-site in the country before, during, and after the events, have discreetly not criticized the government or explained what went wrong.

Protestors insist that the system failure favors the ruling Dominican Liberation Party by buying them an extra month. The ruling partys presidential candidate trails in polls for the May elections. President Danilo Medina has a close relationship with the U.S. government he met with Trump and four other leaders of Caribbean nations at Mar-a-Lago March 21, 2019 to consolidate support for Trump administration policies to remove Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro from office and support Almagros OAS re-election bid, apparently in return for investments in their nations.

Dominica

Almagro is invested in the results of elections in the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean nations. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) holds 14 of the 34 votes in the OAS.

The small island nation of Dominica recently denounced Almagros interference in its own December 6 elections. Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, who has publicly rejected interference in the internal affairs of any country including Venezuela won reelection handily.

But just days before the voting, Almagro tweeted support for opposition demands, as demonstrations by anti-Skerrit forces grew violent. Dominicas foreign minister, Francine Baron, said to the OAS: We are concerned by public pronouncements that have been made by the Secretary General, which display bias, disregard for the governments of member states, and call into question his role and the organizations role as an honest broker.

Democracy at Stake

Speaking in Mexico in August 2019, Almagro stated that if the public does not trust election results, it severely affects the quality of a democracy. However, his partisan role and the biased and dishonest actions of OAS election observation missions have severely undermined democracy in the region.

The region faces major challenges in the near future: 2020 presidential elections in Bolivia and the Dominican Republic, an upcoming Chilean constitutional referendum, and 2021 key presidential elections in Nicaragua, Peru, and Ecuador. These elections could either resolve or enflame political crises.

Impartial election observation by qualified experts can instill trust in the electoral process, expose corrupt and anti-democratic practices, and head off post-electoral conflicts. The region urgently needs an organization that is willing and able to play this role professionally and not act in favor of other regional interests and powers.

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The Organization of American States Is Eroding Faith in Democracy - Common Dreams

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the joy that greeted the rejuvenation of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe has dissipated to a considerable degree.

The region is confronted with great challenges that sometimes make the promise of democracy seem like a mirage. Over time, regimes such as those in Poland, Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria have taken action to curtail the civic space, undermine checks and balances, or concentrate power in the hands of a few.

Aspiring authoritarian leaders and populist politicians are encouraged by the divisive politics within the regions mainstream parties. Inspired by role models such as Russian President Vladimir Putin or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, they feel emboldened to carry out blatant attacks on civil liberties.

Democracys expansion and the accompanying enthusiasm of the 1990s was followed by a more sober assessment of its dividends in the 2000s.

Now, following the end of the third decade since the fall of communism, scepticism has set in and political leaders openly talk about preferences for more illiberal forms of democracy.

Political regimes from Poland to Hungary, from the Czech Republic to Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria, have retreated from the liberal notion of democracy by branding them as Western impositions. In doing so, they have stripped democracy of its many constitutive attributes in favour of a more minimalistic version, built around the act of free and fair elections.

However, this means that those same regimes are using election results as a carte blanche to exert uninhibited power without too many cumbersome layers of checks and balances. And in the process, they tend to assault the judiciary, weaken parliamentary oversight, interfere in independent media, and stifle civil society and freedom of expression. As a result, although the region of Central and Eastern Europe remains democratic, the past decade has not brought significant advancements in the quality of democracy.

Instead, the phenomenon of democratic backsliding has been chipping away at the region as a constant reminder of a creeping authoritarianism and populism.

Civil and political liberties: A luxury we can do without?

The 2019 report The Global State of Democracy: Addressing the Ills, Reviving the Promise from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), dedicates a chapter to the state of democracy in Europe. It provides a health-check on current democratic trends in Central and Eastern Europe.

The analysis finds that more than half of democracies in Europe suffer from democratic erosion. Even more worrisome is that six out of 10 democracies in the world currently experiencing democratic backsliding are in Central and Eastern Europe (Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and to a lesser extent, Ukraine), and Turkey. Democratic backsliding here is defined as the intentional weakening of checks on government and civil liberties by democratically elected governments.

The data from International IDEA shows that the governments of the above countries have been intentionally curtailing parliamentary oversight and the independence of the judiciary as a way to accumulate more power for the executive. Furthermore, they have taken steps to limit freedom of speech and freedom of expression and are stifling civil societys room for manoeuvre.

As the governments themselves see it, such actions are taken to expedite government procedure, without the hassle of an active opposition. Liberal notions such as freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of association, on the other hand, are construed as foreign implants whose real aim is to frustrate the business of daily governance. This dangerous trajectory which shows all the signs of democratic backsliding is one of the main reasons why the quality of democracy has stagnated in the last decade in Europe.

Nevertheless, democratic backsliding may not necessarily end in an authoritarian political regime. Democratic legitimacy continues to be a requirement and constraint of incumbents seeking to monopolise power. However, weakened checks and balances harm the substance of democracy: they enable incumbent governments to avoid public blame for policy failures, sustain unsubstantiated performance claims, and practice exclusionary decision-making. Moreover, unchecked executives can appropriate state resources for partisan or private purposes and expand informal patronage networks of loyalists to penetrate society.

The answer is, and should continue to be, the people

How can democratic backsliding be reversed? At times of political uncertainty and social polarisation, when some governments do not necessarily seem to be bulwarks of liberal democracy, who do we turn to? What is the remedy that will most effectively fight the democratic malaise?

The answer is the people.

However, there is a problem with this solution. Suggesting that the people will reawaken the liberal values of democracy tends to ignore the fact that it is the people who voted for the same political leaders who are putting at risk those liberal values.

Therefore, the question that ought to be explored is why people are voting for those leaders that end up eroding liberal values in the first place? In other words, relying on the people as a panacea for all societal ills, without understanding the underlying causes of democratic backsliding and authoritarian encroachment, tends to become a rather a lazy solution offered by opinion-formers to solve problems which are more complex and require deeper dissection.

At the same time however, people are indeed the solution. A formula for more equitable representation, more accountability and transparency, and more emphasis on the liberal tenets of democracy, lies with the people.

However, we should also recognise that mainstream political parties are to a large degree responsible for losing electoral support as they have not been sufficiently attentive and responsive to the concerns of all citizens. These parties need to renew their engagement with their electorates. Decentralised and inclusive deliberation and decision-making within these parties is one way to bring people back onside.

Party leaders and party representatives holding public office also need to revise public policies that meet citizens expectations. In particular, policies should reach out to those groups of society that have felt excluded from decision-making and from the fruits of economic development. Responsive policies are not tantamount to myopic spending or fiscal irresponsibility. Policy trade-offs and cost-benefit considerations can be explained to citizens, so as to ensure a sound knowledge basis for informed choices. Political elites should engage in rational, problem-solving dialogues with citizens. These public consultations should be guarded by procedural and institutional arrangements preventing misinformation or demagoguery.

When such actions are undertaken by politicians and mainstream political parties, the peoples choice will be clearer. Establishing appreciative, considerate dialogue between political representatives and citizens is a strategy that can revive the trust of citizens in political institutions.

By contrast, populist politicians usually substitute meaningful dialogue with fictitious claims about understanding the will of the ordinary people. Electoral majorities are then re-interpreted as popular mandates to ignore and erode institutional checks and balances, promising policies that will serve the people directly.

To address populist challengers, supporters of democracy need to expose these tactics. Only then can they light a path towards a more responsive democracy with stronger institutions that uphold the checks and balances that ensure democratic accountability.

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Rekindling democracy in Central and Eastern Europe - Emerging Europe

Joe Bidens younger brother is facing allegations of financial fraud in civil court proceedings. According to a lawsuit filed in federal court by a pair of medical firms, James Biden promised investors at the for-profit hospital chain Americore Health that hed leverage the Biden family name to attract a large investment from the Middle East. The money never materialized, and Americore has since entered bankruptcy proceedings but not before James Biden allegedly walked away with a $650,000 personal loan from the company that he has yet to repay. Politico reports James Biden introduced Americores founder to his older brother Joe Biden at a September 2017 fundraiser for the Beau Biden Foundation. A Biden campaign spokesperson denied Joe Biden ever discussed Americore with his brother or expressed support for the business. James Bidens ties to Americore came under increased scrutiny following an FBI raid on the companys Ellwood City hospital in Pennsylvania in January. The reason for the raid is unknown.

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Joe Biden's Brother Faces Fraud Allegations over For-Profit Hospital Ties - Democracy Now!